Golem Assault Armor - Technical Readout 3075 page 127
The first Clan Assault class Battle Armor to be published, the Ghost Bears' Golem is a tough opponent to kill, with a brooding, brutish appearance to match. Sadly, apart from the latest variant, its armament isn't quite so impressive, even with the publication of Tactical Operations 2nd Ed.
Another of the suits first introduced in Combat Equipment and then later expanded upon in Technical Readout 3075, the Golem was the first Assault design to be seen in Clan service since the early experimental days for Battle Armor at the end of the twenty-ninth century. Having recently moved their entire Clan to the Inner Sphere, the Ghost Bears soon found themselves under attack from both Inner Sphere and Clan opponents. Encounters with the Draconis Combine's Kanazuchi and the Hell's Horses' Gnome convinced the Bears that they needed to develop their own heavy support suit to complement the venerable Elemental. Designed and put into production in just under three years, the development project outstripped the setting up of the manufacturing facilities, resulting in limited supplies at first. Interestingly, despite the production bottleneck, examples were even observed in the First Rasalhague Bears according to Combat Equipment, although it's noted that they're only under Rasalhagian command, implying that they're operated by Ghost Bear Warriors, rather than being fielded by Inner Sphere troopers. By 3070 the production issues were resolved and the Golem has become a common sight across the Bears' Touman.
Given the example of the Kanazuchi, it's understandable that the Bears decided to go down the same Assault path, although this did result in one major change for their Touman, with the Golem being the first modern Clan design incapable of Mechanized Battle Armor tactics. That would have required a fairly hefty APC capable of lifting ten tons of suits - ignoring the quirk of the basic Total War rules that allows the laws of physics to be warped by enabling those ten tons to squeeze into just five - which is a vehicle design still scarce in the Bears' Touman. According to the Master Unit List, the Bears do have access to the Epona OmniVehicle, so could technically just configure those with a large internal infantry bay, but really they need more options than that, preferably a vehicle they build themselves.
This paucity of battlefield transport has some interesting implications, which appear to be echoed in the design of the Golem itself. The limited mobility effectively dictates a defensive role, which often means urban environments given the need to hold population and manufacturing centers as part of a successful invasion or defense of a world. With boosted ground speed, offering twice the movement of foot infantry or most Battle Armor when not using jump jets, the Golem can be surprisingly mobile in buildings, and while it won't win any races against 'Mechs or vehicles the extra speed is better than nothing when lacking an APC.
As impressive as it might be to see a 2000kg bipedal suit stomp around at over 20kph, it's the Golem's armor that is truly its most eye opening feature. Offering more protection than even the armor belt of the bricklike Kanazuchi, with no less than eighteen armor points, the Golem could eat a couple of hits from an Inner Sphere Large Pulse Laser and get right back up. Of course, any hit would then wreck the suit and kill the trooper, but that sort of ability to absorb damage is going to make any opponent sweat. This is a Battle Armor design that you definitely can't afford to handle with your secondary armament if you really need to kill it right now, instead it demands the use of primary armament and even then requires multiple hits from all but the heaviest of weapons.
Adding to its already incredible level of protection, the Clan technicians didn't settle for just using standard armor plate, they instead upped the ante and wrapped the suit in Fire Resistant composites. Most importantly, this made the Golem immune to Infernos, which is a key method for killing heavily armored suits for relatively little effort. Consider the simple example of a single SRM4 fired at a squad of Ravagers, a recent design that shares the Golem's eighteen points of armor: if the SRM4 is loaded with standard missiles, then the best result would be a single suit taking eight damage, although more likely it would be six points spread across multiple suits; however, if using Infernos instead, then the average result would be one dead suit. If using SRMs against a Point of Golems, then you'd have to have to shoot no less than forty-six missiles to 100% guarantee a kill.
Of course, it must always be remembered that the Golem needs that level of armor if an enemy ever targets it. Lacking any form of stealth or the ability to generate a Target Movement Modifier, Golems have only their ability to absorb damage to survive on the battlefield. Clever commanders (players) will attempt to cover for this weakness by stationing Golems inside buildings, masking them with smoke or even using other units as a distraction in the hopes of forcing an enemy to split their fire. Of course, the enemy can be equally clever, exploiting the Golem's poor mobility by using artillery, for example, or even simply attempting to drag the fight away from wherever the Battle Armor have dug in.
Unlike many Battle Armor designs, the Golem avoids wasting any mass on unnecessary Battle Claws, mounting the bare minimum Basic Manipulators. Armored Gloves would have allowed the wielding of infantry weapons, but at least the design avoids using any mass on manipulators that provide little or no benefit given the size of the chassis. This efficiency is important given that the combination of armor and increased ground mobility leaves just 600kg for weapon. Of course, a fair amount of damage can be done with the right choice of weaponry that could be squeezed in that half ton plus, but this is where the Golem begins to lose some of its shine, in my opinion.
The armament starts well enough, with the traditional selection of a heavy missile array, in this case a hefty five-tube Advanced SRM launcher supplied by a pair of salvos. This particular configuration is a continuation of the pattern begun with the Elemental itself, that then continues with the Gnome - one of the inspirations for the Golem - with each suit getting an improved two-shot missile launcher as the size of the chassis increases. Given that the earlier Gnome upgraded to Advanced SRMs, it's inevitable that the Golem also uses them, with the only available improvement being more launch tubes. Able to strike targets at 12 hexes with a slight boost on the Cluster Hits Table, a Point of Golems can inflict an average of thirty-two points of damage at a third greater distance than the standard Battle Armor missile battery. While a serious threat to any armored foe, the ability to only launch two such salvos does limit its usefulness, and unlike other designs the Golem is likely to be a suit that will run out of ammo before it runs out of armor.
When initially published, the secondary weaponry can really only be described as awful. Actually, it could be described in other terms, but many of the most satisfying aren't really printable. With 300kg available, the Bears' technicians chose to mount paired weapons, which is a reasonable decision given the available types at the time - remember, this was prior to the introduction of the AP Gauss Rifle - but then instead of opting for Flamers or even Heavy Machine Guns, they decide upon the Bearhunter autocannon, a recent development by the Hell's Horses, so perhaps the Bears can be forgiven what would have been seen as the latest advancement in Clan technology. Despite their performance in the RPG, the original BattleTech stats for Bearhunters made them the best way to waste 150kg, thanks to their combination of mediocre damage, poor range and terrible accuracy. Once the missiles were gone, you could pretty much ignore a Point of Golems, not really worrying even if you ended up in range, except perhaps for PBIs. For Battle Armor at least, that has changed thanks to Tactical Operations 2nd Ed.
First released as errata, 2nd Ed added the concept of certain Battle Armor weapons inflicting more damage when used against other Battle Armor, akin to how some weapons inflict more damage when used against conventional infantry. While Bearhunters still suffer from an almost crippling combination of poor range and horrible inaccuracy, they now inflict a jaw-dropping 3D6 damage per shot when hitting Battle Armor. That means that an average shot is guaranteed to kill most Inner Sphere Battle Armor, and there's a reasonable chance that an Elemental would be one-shot killed too. With ten such weapons spread across a Point, Golems suddenly became a Very Bad Thing for their fellow armored infantrymen. If they hit.
Due to the issue of range and accuracy, enemy Elementals and Inner Sphere troopers alike don’t have to update their CVs and start looking for a new career just yet. Really, unless you get really unlucky in a double-blind game, or you're forced into a situation that puts the Golems in range, you can still snap your fingers at them and just dance out of their reach as before. Given the plethora of long ranged Battle Armor weaponry that has been introduced since the Elemental suit first graced us with its presence, it's the Golem that perhaps should be more concerned, although its thick armor plate means that it'll take a while for enemy troops to peck their way through to the meat, which is time they might not have.
Given the selection of the Bearhunters, it almost feels inevitable that the technicians failed to use the last 10kg of available mass to add a pair of AP Weapon Mounts. At least they would have allowed the use of the Mauser IIC, thereby giving limited firepower out to nine hexes once the missiles were gone.
Overall, I have to compare the Golem (Standard) with the Kanazuchi, and I can't say that I'm all that impressed with the Clan technology in this case. Okay, the Clans are somewhat handicapped due to the lack of the Medium Laser as an option for their Battle Armor - a hole in their arsenal that not even the mighty AP Gauss Rifle truly fills despite sharing the same range and damage/mass ratio - but it would have still been possible to design an overall superior version, with a massive advantage in sustained firepower. Such a design wouldn't have matched the canon Golem for burst damage, but as noted before the Golem is a suit that begs for heavy sustained firepower given its heavy armor.
Returning the favor of the Bears' acquisition of their Bearhunter, the Hell's Horses were the next to take up the Golem, although at least they didn't make the mistake of using their own weapon with the introduction of their Rock Golem variant in 3072. Perhaps due to their plentiful supply of vehicles, with more than one viable APC option available, the Horses made the interesting choice of lowering the Rock Golem's speed by increasing its effective armament payload via the use of Detachable Weapon Packs, the first such use of technology among the Clans and arguably its best use in Technical Readout 3075. Reducing a non-missile weapon's mass by 25% for the purposes of chassis limits, Detachable Weapon Packs do come at the cost of severely curtailing mobility until jettisoned, although for ground-based Assault suits like the Rock Golem the effects aren't as harsh as they are for lighter, jump-capable designs.
Unfortunately, the Questionable Weapon Choice Monster struck again and the Rock Golem comes with twin Heavy Recoilless Rifles instead of the original Bearhunters. While impressive weapons, and obviously a massive improvement over the Bearhunters, they are somewhat inefficient compared to other choices, such as the ever popular AP Gauss Rifle. That said, I can understand from a game point of view that always jumping on the Gauss Rifle bandwagon can easily get boring, but a little voice inside me still sobs quietly at what might have been. As an alternative, the Rock Golem could have used Mediums instead, keeping its base speed at 2 MP, for only a small reduction in weapon effectiveness and with only a minor redesign.
Massing in at 245kg apiece when including the effects of the Detachable Weapon Packs, the Heavy Recoilless Rifles also required that the missile launcher be downgraded to a one-shot system equipped with standard SRMs instead of the original Advanced SRMs, and that really hurts. Of course, nobody likes to be shot in the face with twenty-five SRMs, so a foe can't ignore the reduced threat, but knowing that you have only a single shot can sometimes lead to the struggle to decide between the perhaps marginal shot now against the possibility of better shot later, with the risk that the better shot might never come. I can understand the choice of a one-shot SRM5 from an aesthetic point of view, given that the new variant would thus retain an all but identical appearance with the original Standard model, but again I can't help but wish for a different choice.
At least with the pair of heavy Rifles, the Rock Golem is capable of a punishing sustained barrage, which means it can often afford to hold back its SRMs for that key shot, whether it be a deathblow or to finish a nearly downed foe. With half the speed of the Golem (Standard), it's not going to be quite so swift around the battlefield when forced to rely upon its own capabilities, but the plethora of transport options make it much easier for Horses' commanders to reposition their Rock Golems if necessary. Despite my grumblings about the Heavy Recoilless Rifles, it shouldn't be overlooked that these are powerful weapons, with better range and thus accuracy than many lesser weapons. To find yourself within a few hexes of a Point of Rock Golems is going to be a sharp lesson in the meaning of pain, which the Battle Armor will happily keep teaching all day.
In the same year that the Horses fielded the Rock Golem, they also introduced another Golem variant, dubbed the Fast Assault, a design that couldn't be any more different. The two models do share the same missile launcher and the same ground speed, although permanent in the case of Fast Assault, but that's it for all intents and purposes. The armor is downgraded to Standard plate, losing the immunity to Infernos and thus making it a far less difficult suit to kill once hit, but most importantly a massive jump pack is added on the back, including a Jump Booster. Due to their jump jets, it's not uncommon to see Fast Assaults being dropped from Anhurs, without the latter having to touchdown. Of course, this can be risky if the enemy gets a clear shot at the transports before the drop, but really that's true of any use of VTOLs. Thanks to the jets, the Fast Assaults are also much better in open field combat, especially in terrain crisscrossed by rivers or other such features impassable to ground troops.
Seeing a two ton suit leap ninety meters at a time must be a stunning sight, but the Fast Assault has to dedicate more mass to that capability than the original Golem devotes to its entire weapon payload! That leaves an almost pitiful mass available for the variant's own armament, and other than the one-shot SRM launcher, the Fast Assault has just a single Machine Gun paired with a mere AP Weapon Mount, mimicking the configuration of the Elemental. The Golem (Fast Assault) is never going to win any competitions for firepower, and being an Assault suit it's unable to perform Anti-'Mech attacks, but the combination of jump mobility and protection means that it can be a major pain to kill. That can give it time to inflict a slow but steady series of pinprick attacks that can eventually build up to be real a real threat for lighter opponents, with the one-shot missiles a useful knockout blow when the foe is getting close to the edge. Personally, I've also had good usage employing them as spotters, alongside their general harassment role, and obviously their use of a Machine Gun makes them dangerous to conventional infantry.
For many years, both real world and in-universe, it appeared that the Bears had abandoned any further development of their creation, but then they introduced the Golem (Support). Appearing in Technical Readout 3085 Old Is The New New or 3076 depending upon your point of view, the Support is one of the most dangerous Battle Armor designs in the game, but one that I don't often see getting chosen for scenarios. It's easy to get enamored by the ammoless firepower of weapons such as the AP Gauss Rifle or ER Medium Laser, but all too often players forget just how incredibly efficient and powerful the Clantech missile launchers actually are. Yes, not having any ammo concerns can be very useful in extended games, but quite frequently Battle Armor simply don't survive extended games. Even suits as tough as the Golem are relative small fry when compared to any decent tank or 'Mech, and so it's not uncommon for a suit to only get off a handful of shots before being destroyed.
In the case of the Golem (Support), it has half a dozen shots before its Advanced SRM6 runs dry and that will often be more than enough for the typical scenario. Retaining the same speed and eighteen points of Fire Resistant armor as the original, the Support has only a pair of AP Weapon Mounts to back up its missiles, but really the latter are all it needs. Compare the Golem (Support) to the Ironhold (Fire), which is frequently held up as the top dog when it comes to dishing out Battle Armor-style mayhem. While on an individual basis, the Ironhold (Fire)'s AP Gauss Rifles can inflict greater damage assuming all four guns hit, the Golem (Support) matches the number of hits with a typical salvo, and does it with greater range, more speed and more armor, plus has its AP Weapon Mount for the possibility of a Mauser IIC attack to tip the hits total in its favor too. Once you take into account Points, rather than individual suits, then the Cluster Hits Table also impacts the Ironhold, and suddenly its damage advantage melts away as well. Of course, there are benefits to the quad array of AP Gauss Rifle that the Golem (Support) can't match, such as the dual role against infantry and armored targets, but truly the Support variant is an unsung hero of the Battle Armor world.
Overall, with the exception of the Support variant, I have to say that for me the Golem evokes feelings of frustration; probably the same frustration felt by those trying to kill the damned thing! Yes, it's incredibly tough, and its mobility is above what many might expect for an Assault suit, but the weaponry holds the Golem back. Of course, there are times when you just need a unit to survive, with any damage dished out being a bonus feature, but the Golem can't always rely upon friendly units to kill the foe, and that's an uncomfortable weakness in my eyes. As the first Clan Assault suit that we get to use, the Golem will always occupy a fond spot in my memories, but apart from the Golem (Support) I sadly find that it's had its day in the sun and time has moved on to newer and more balanced designs.
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